One of the wealthiest and most powerful armed Islamists in north Africa, Amar Saifi, was behind bars on Monday in his home country of Algeria following the intervention of Libya's Muammar Qaddafi.
Saifi was the No. 2 in Algeria's main violent Islamist organization, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), and responsible for the kidnapping of 32 foreign tourists in the Sahara desert last year. His group had pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and he ran, in effect, a private army that roamed across the desert frontiers of several north African states.
Qaddafi received praise from Washington for handing over Saifi to the Algerian government.
"This continues to show Libya's reintegration into world society and coming down on the side of law and order and the war on terrorism," a US military official told Reuters at the weekend.
Saifi was reported to have been captured several months ago by a rebel, non-Islamist group from Chad, and it was unclear how he turned up in Libya last week. Press reports around the region have speculated either that Qaddafi threatened the Chad group with air attacks, or that he paid it for Saifi.
Last year Saifi was reported to have extracted 5 million euros (US$6.4 million) from the German government in return for the release of 32 tourists kidnapped while on adventure holidays in the Algerian Sahara. A German woman died of heatstroke in captivity and German authorities had put out an international search warrant for Saifi.
The Algerian daily El Watan reported at the weekend that Saifi, a former Algerian paratrooper who is half-French, had used the money to recruit fighters and buy weapons.
Saifi had reportedly arranged marriages with the daughters of tribal leaders in northern Mali to ensure support there. He was a main target for US special forces who had been training local soldiers in Chad, Mali and other countries in anti-terrorist tactics amid fears that al-Qaeda style groups would find refuge in the region's barren, difficult terrain.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing